Biomonitoring of bisphenol A in hair of Greek population.

OBJECTIVE

Bisphenol A (BPA) is considered as an endocrine-disruptor in which humans are exposed daily mainly by food-contact products, toys, recycled paper and drinking containers. In this study, we validated a method for the isolation and the detection of BPA in human head hair samples and estimated the burden of BPA in hair of Greek population.

METHODS

Hair samples were collected from 69 volunteers. The isolation of the BPA was performed by solid–liquid extraction with methanol and its determination by a liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry technique.

RESULTS

The limits of quantification (LOQ = 9.7 pg mg(−1)), the accuracy (92.6%), the precision (inter 15.3%, intra 13.0%), the ion suppression (<8.1%) and the recovery (88.3%) of the method were found satisfactory. Differences in the detection rates of the positive samples as well in detected levels of BPA between rural and urban population were observed. The 41.2% of the samples collected from urban population were positive whereas the positive samples from rural population were 14.8% (p = 0.025). The mean concentration of the positive samples for the urban population was 64.1 pg mg(−1) (17.7–192.8 pg mg(−1)), for the rural population 40.3 pg mg(−1) (13.1–72.8 pg mg(−1)) and for the children 37.9 pg mg(−1) (13.1–72.8 pg mg(−1)). Significant statistical differences (p = 0.021) were observed though between urban and rural population only when negative samples were replaced with LOD/2 values.

CONCLUSION

The proposed method was successfully applied for the determination of BPA in hair for the estimation of the population burden to BPA.